I do not know how accurate the list is, but number 6 on it is Super Size me. A very famous and to many important documentary. But is it? The article point out that the Fat Head film shows that the maths does not ad up in it. That Spurlock is actually lying in the film.

Over eating is of course not good in the long run. But what one overeat with, definitely matters.There where 5 persons according to the video below that increased their weight by 15%. Spurlock did increase his by 13% so of course it is individual difference. But as we know, there is also a difference from where a calorie come from. As calorie is not the same everywhere.

The man behind the study was a guy called Fredrik Nyström, if anyone is interested in what he is doing currently can check at Linköping University
He is a professor, and among the low carb deniers someone who does not know and understand science.

He writes books about one should eat fat, drink coffee, nuts and drink wine.
But he also do talks in the media promoting high fat diet.

Then is it a video, unfortunately in Swedish where he describes the study mentioned above. (I had to use Internet Explorer to see it)
Some guys where eating 7000 kcal a day. Much as possible in hamburgers. So one have to understand that even if he talks a lot of fat. Is it of course an increase of calories of everything, also protein and carbohydrate and loads of sugar. As what they was supposed to do was to go hamburger places and eat there. He got an image of 14 Big mac as normal daily intake. Does anyone think they only ate that? Sodas and French fries was also large as possible I assume.

I find it funny that people had problem with stomach ache. I can easily understand that when you increase your sugar intake. But it seemed as they could get around it by having a milkshake. Mix it with cream and drink that. Would give 2000 kcal and no stomach ache.

They tried to study what people ate and what happened with their blood values. Among those that ate mostly saturated fat did their HDL increase most. And that seem to be a good thing. If you know anything about cholesterol.

Also the more carbohydrates the subject had in their diet. The worse liver values did you get.

Then he presents another study where they randomized 25 people into 2 groups. Where they had to eat 20kcal/day/bodyweight in kg extra for 2 weeks. That is, if the person weight was 80 kg did they have to eat 20*80 = 1600 kcal a day. Besides what they normally ate
One of the group had to eat those extra kcal with candy. The other by eating peanuts.

Result? Those who ate candy did increase the LDL, insulin and bodyweight. All of is a bad thing to have. But among those who ate peanuts did they not see any difference. They on other hand started to increase their BMR

The last thing about BMR correlates with what happen in the previous study.

Does not anyone see a pattern here?

I have always loved peanut butter. And if I can get it sugar free will I definitely eat it.

He also goes on describing how tests that is used by the medical industry on fat cells, to test different substance against diabetes. They where showing that that palm oil and saturated fat was giving the best protection against diabetes. Fish oil did hardly anything. Among fats that is.

There is something about the guy. I think he been involved in web blog with opinion that I do not have.
But if that is that case, do I like to point out that I do in the case of nutrition do I think he has something important to say.

The begining
In this post do I want to take up a couple of things. Like, is saturated fat and cholesterol bad for you or can you train and be on ketongenic diet? Together with, what is cholesterol and ketosis?

The wonderful thing about it, is that I do not need to write anything. I only have to refer to The Eating Academy. blog by Peter Attia. He has knowledge, and a obsession for real data and numbers. Together with a personal story makes his pages a gold mine for anyone interested in nutrition.

The background, nothing about LCHF
Listening and reading his various talk and blog posts, tells a story of a highly gifted nerd/jock with knowledge that is close to a passion for the subject. For some, that is a contradiction. How could it be that someone is both athletic and number cruncher? The answer could be in his pages under his My Personal Nutrition Journey.

But I think the best place to start, is to read his post in remembrance of his teacher Woody, whom influenced him to give up a career as a kick boxer and instead give mathematics a fighting chance.
His post Thank you, Woody tells you how his life changed into a completely new direction , and therefore a place I recommend anyone to start of with.

As second place to go to is post about his experience of his participation at 2013 TEDMED. His post TEDMED 2013…now I get it tells you some on what is happening in the background leading up to the conference, and during it.

He gives some reference to various other speakers, but unfortunately no links to their talks. This is because he wrote the post shortly after the event, and they still had not been posted on the net. I checked some of them out, and they where very good.

He also refer to an old talk by Ric Elias. And do as he writes. “Seriously. STOP READING THIS NOW AND WATCH IT.” The talk Ric Elias had at an TED event 2011: 3 things I learned while my plane crashed is a something to stop reading this for a while and listen to instead.

Finally something about LCHF
So far, have no reading or videos I been recommending anything to do with LCHF or nutrition. Ok I did mention his Nutrition Journey. But I did not recommend it, not yet at least.

But before doing that, do I want to recommend you to listen to his own 2013 TEDMED talk. The Peter Attia: What if we’re wrong about diabetes? do show his passion for the problem and a reflection of what he thought before and what he think now about cause and effect. But also point out, that today do we do not know definitely what the answer is. And that we have to be open to throw our prejudice and ideas out the window.

Also before I recommend the pages, is it something that need to be mention. Like all other pages out there in the internet does it seem as it is again only about losing weight and keeping it under control. This is as I tried to say before, something of a problem, as high weight is only one of possible symptoms for methabolic syndrom, To be more clear, one does not be fat or little round to have methabolic syndrom or get diabetes.

And this fixation with weight leads some people away for the issue that is important. What are the underlying markers and what to they tell us?
With that in mind can you read is journey

Is saturated fat and cholesterol bad for you
The blog post How did we come to believe saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for us?
Is a very good explanation to why everybody nowadays believes that “saturated fat is blood clogging”, while showing that this belief is actually built on very shaky ground. Reading and listening to his talk further down in the text is very informative.

Can you train and be on ketongenic diet?
Since I started with LCHF have I trained very little. My page My Training
tries to tell how much I have done. A couple of weeks ago did I restart with jogging and something I never done before, muscle building. I will describe it more on the page and try to keep it up to date in the future.

But one of the myths that exists, is that training and carbohydrates goes hand in hand. That you cannot exercise unless you also eat load of carbohydrates. This is something I want to debunk with my training page.

He already done that in his talk My Quantified Self, Part I
Again listen to his lecture further down the text: Peter Attia – An Advantaged Metabolic State: Human Performance, Resilience that is his personal story how he used to train 3-4 hours a day for competitions and still got problem. To how his body now reacts to his exercising.

He have the luck of being tested in some of the top facilities that exists for measuring performance.

Also, just as important, it tells us where our bodies take energy from, depending on type of exercise, and how much we have of it. And what is happening when you use up all the glucose your body have.

Point is, if they been wrong about that glucose is the only thing the body burn when exercising, very likely they been wrong with other things.

End notes
So this is the blog I started saying I would not need to write much. But if you read everything on this page and want to listen to what Peter has to say in his talks and recommended listening. Be prepared, it will take more than couple hours.

Found it to be of very interesting reading and I had all intentions to write something. But then I found out that the Fat Head already written a piece on it.

It seemed to me that I could save some of my precious time and just link it to it. So if you think it is to long to read the article yourself. Here you have his comments with extracts:Review Article Exonerates Saturated Fat

He links to guy who did a test on himself. Eating about 5800 calories a day, for 21 days. To see what would happened. Day 21 of The 21 Day 5,000 Calorie Challenge
When Spurlock in the Supers size me ate 5000 a day in a month did he gain about 11 kg.

This guy only gained 1,3 kg Of course he followed a low carb diet. His tummy on the same time shrank 3 cm !!

As Tom says in his movie Fat Head (today did I finally add that and others, under Video) Someone has some explaining to do. Because according to the calorie in and calorie out theory, should he have gained over 7 kg.

If I understand right will he repeat the experiment with carbohydrates in September, to see if the reason he did not put on anything is because he belongs to the lucky who cannot put on weight. And not the lack of carbs, As some of the comments been.

Is caloric restriction the way to live longer? Many seem to think so. At least now in Sweden since a while ago the documentary Eat, fast and live longer with Dr Michael Mosley was aired on the swedish television.
(The link should work if your in Sweden, until 12 of June. After that try YouTube or other)

As it been put to me as a truth that is certain, and that everybody knows that. Did it made me hitching to take closer look on why this is so. Or rather, is it right that by restricting your caloric intake, could you live longer?

So what did I learn from listening and reading?
Well from the swedish science magazine that is not one of those common ”Illustrated” ones, instead I think it has a good reputation, could I read that longelivity on Okninawa depends on 4 things.

They get high amounts of Flavonoids from their homegrown vegetables, less meat and more fatty fish. Eat slowly without being full. (article claim low saturated fat)

Daily physical work, taking care of your garden. Those vegetables does not grow by themselves.

Taking care of the their total health, physical, mental, social and spiritual.

And social network

And genes

Actually 5, as they also consider genetics important so I add that to the list.

From Eat fast and live longer with Dr Michael Mosley did I learn a new word, IGF-1, some kind of protein. So after all these different cholesterol types and whatever else. Should I now also keep on eye on this? As it seem to be linked with cancer. It should be low according to the scientist in the program. And one way to lower it is to eat less protein. But just less, you still need it on daily basis. Also important is lower blood sugar.
The documentary advocates either fasting (no food) for 4 days each month or the popular 5:2 eating plan. That is, eat anythiing for 5 days. And then eat only 500-600 cal a day for 2 days. Actually Michael Mosley his now selling a book on it.

While in Ovodda on Sardinia also have long living population. Here is it because of the genes. Because they eat and drink as if it was no tomorrow. The longevity seem to be clustered to certain families.

Loma Linda in California is also is marked on world map as a blue zone. This time the reason for so many old people, seem to be spiritual and social life together with daily exercising.

I do not know what color the opposite of blue zone is. But Glasgow according to the documentary is the opposite. As also pointed out in the bbc article Glasgow has lowest life expectancy in UK. The reason is according the documentory due to overcrowding during the industrial revolution. And here population developed something called high inflammatory response. That protected you when you young from viruses and deceases so you could reach adult age and breed children before you die.
But then as you get older could an over acting immune system cause diabetes, heart decease. Which should be common in Glasgow.

Just to show that nature maybe not out to kill you after you stopped breeding. But just do not care for you anymore.

Discussion
When I did meet people in the 80s who had visit Sweden, or maybe only Stockholm. Comments where that they never seen so many beautiful old people, and asked my why. I could only agree that mediterraneans usually looked older. I attributed mainly to the sun, that it dried out the skin.
Does tourists think the same today? Do I? No I do not think so. So what have changed for them that was born after 1900-1930? Do our charter trips make the sun dry our skin?

I do not think most things depends on only one thing. Or at least, usually something depends on more things then one. Some more important, and some less. But here, I will try to point my finger on something I think is an important factor.

Thought for many years that one secret to slow down aging, was to have a “no worry” attitude. As one person somewhere in one of documentaries said. You have to have a reason to get out of bed in the morning. And I think that most of us can imagine that has some truth to it and heard expressions like, “she died of broken heart” when for example losing a child.

And it have shown that stress and worries do cause inflammation in the arteries. And that is the begining that leads to heart problem. So don’t worry be happy, is a good slogan.
But what are the other causes for some people to look young and healthy, and maybe also is? Genes besides.

The idea, that lowering the calories is the answer, is to me a kind of case of simplifying the case. If you are one of those, and lets face it, most people does, who thinks a calorie is a calorie. Then of course, any improvements on your health is only because of lowering the caloric intake.

But I’m not. So I will look for what I want to find. And yes, I am well aware that it is biased.

Improvements on life expectancy with low caloric intake has been shown on for example rats, monkeys and yeast. But it has not been tested on human. As we cannot lock up a couple of hundreds, feed them different things and see how long they live. Still to me, when something seem to work for many difference species, then why not, it is plausible. If it was only one, no way.

In the Eat, fast and live longer documentary does a Cronie only eat the skin of an apple. As that is where 95% of the nutrients is. The rest is sugar, and throws it. Because he do not want the sugar. But for him, is the calories he want to avoid. So even though he fills him up on berries is it still low calorie. So it seems to me that maybe it is not much sugar in his food. Or at least protected with fibers.

By the way, the Cronie presented there does not look healthy at all to me.

In the Eat, fast and live longer. Does the Dr Valter Longo want us to lower the IGF-1 and blood sugar.
Guess what, I know a way to lower the blood sugar. Ditch the carbohydrates.
The reason for lowering the IGF-1 seem to because it will stop the body to make new cells. Instead will it encourage it to repair old ones.

It is clear that lack of IGF-1 seem to prohibit growth. As the genetically modified rats without it, are tiny. But hey, they live longer. And people with a decease which makes them lack the IGF-1 are stunt in their growth.

And it is longevity we where looking for. Not if it says cancer or other thing on your death certificate.

Later in the documentary do they look on rats that develop Alzheimer’s. Those of them that go on intermittent fasting will increase life expectancy and develop the Alzheimer’s later.

So what does the fasting entail? I do not know for sure. But it seems to me that they are giving the mice that is not fasting “Fast food” or something similar to taking them to McDonalds. More specific they give them fat and water with fructose in it. Actually it is a little unclear.

The scientist, Mark Mattson, make equality between fat and sugar. But mainly points to the sugar put in their food and saying:“high fat diet exactly we put fructose in their drinking water and that has a dramatic effect.. earlier onset of memory and learning problem”

If I am right, this guy who supposedly is a well known scientist is doing the cardinal sin. Not changing one parameter.
Then they show that the rats on no sugary water but fasting is creating new brain cells. But wait a minute. Was it not important to lower the IGF-1, and you did that by fasting. To stop the body to create new cells?

It is something very strange here.

So now we go to the studies on monkeys.
First thing that strikes me is that we have 2 different studies. And they give different result. At least when it comes to life expectancy. No cause for any subjectivity. Your where born at a certain date and died another.
You can always be someone who say “oh that is easy, it is a difference because the experiments that presents findings that oppose my opinion are bad done”. Or you can look for what they did differently.
They write on some places that even though it was same type of monkeys was their origin different. Good point. As we know gene could matter. But we talk about 2 different groups and the effect of fasting inside them. Not sure I make my point there.

We all know what happens when we add sugar to the diet. At least if you beleive Dr Lustig We get hungrier and eat more. Just like those poor monkeys.

Conclusion

Yes I pointing my finger here to one thing. But I do accept that it is more to it than just sugar.

To live a life without stress is to me also important.My life is in the hands of any rascal who chooses to annoy or tease me .
Supposedly said by Joseph Hunter. Whom likewise supposedly died 2 weeks afterward when someone did make him lose temper.

And if you think intermittent fasting is right. Then the good thing with LCHF, and most people doing it, agree on it. You start intermittent fasting automatically. Not because you decide to starve yourself and think feeling hunger is healthy, instead you do it because your are just not hungry.

Hey! what about the Okinawa cases?
It seem to have been done many studies on how bad health the second generation of Japanese immigrant to the US have, compared to those in the old home country. Indicating gene has nothing to do with it.

I know I should not, but I find just a little funny how the camera in the How to live to 101 – BBC Horizon zoom in on a japanese/american family celebrating a 101 year birthday. While the speaker says that his children, will not live as long as he has. And all the time are they eating a sugary cake.

Sugar that supposedly the Japanese did not get much in old time. And I do think the old people of Okinawa is not eating much of it either.

Long time now since I wrote anything. Unfortunately I been a little busy.

I read an interesting article on BBC News (Does chocolate give you spots?) about acne. You know spots. The question is if it is a link between chocolate and spots. Some people think so and other do not. According to the article is the verdict still out there.

What fascinated me with the article was not so much if chocolate actually cause spots or not. But the discussion about scientific result. How can one be sure that the studies are correct and do not have flaws in them. When it comes to food is there so many different things that can and should be taken into account. So even the simple act of finding out the effect of chocolate, is hard.

One thing that is it says:

Until the 1960s, the view that chocolate exacerbated the problem was widely held in the scientific community. It was thought that acne sufferers had an impaired tolerance of glucose, the sugar which our bodies convert carbohydrates into for distribution in the bloodstream. Popular textbooks of the 1940s and 1950s counseled against sugary food and drink – including chocolate – as part of acne treatment.

I think I take my guess on old honest wisdom. Just as everybody knew that carbohydrate made you rounder. They also very likely had it right about this.

Well again do we have a study that according to the Swedish newspaper DN. Proves we should ditch the butter and go for the margarine. So it is time to try to find the study and see what it says, and how it was done.

Unfortunately when it came to the study itself. Does it cost to read it at Journal of Internal Medicine. But the abstract has some information.

To begin with, is it an observational or intervention study? It was an intervention, that is good. Did they check for compliance? As much as one can expect when they not inhouse. They used ”4-day food diaries and fatty acid composition of serum phospholipids”. Last thing, means as I understand taking blood samples to verify what they eat.

How about drop outs? ”Altogether 309 individuals were screened, 200 started the intervention after 4-week run-in period, and 96 (proportion of drop outs 7.9%) and 70 individuals (drop outs 27%) completed the study, in the Healthy diet and Control diet groups, respectively”. So it says that they only had 7.9 % drop out in the intervention group. While in the control group did they lose nearly 30 %. Why? Did they die? Then what about the 109 (309-200) that did not continue the study. Why where they excluded? Hopefully is it possible to read that in the full paper.

Who where the subjects? ”individuals with features of metabolic syndrome…..BMI 31.6”. And even though BMI is not a best way to measure health. Do I guess that these where not the average health club visitor.

So did they change one variable for the intervention group. Of course not. The intervention group where to eat following ”A healthy Nordicdiet can also be composed according to the principle of locally-sourced foods. Hard animal fat and milk fat are replaced by rapeseed oil and plant oil based margarine, fat-free or low fat dairy products are recommended, eat plenty of domestic seasonal fruits, which in the Nordic countries means apples, pears or plumbs, berries, vegetables, root vegetables, legumes and cabbage, plus wholegrain products made from rye, barley or oats every day. Nuts can also be part of the diet. Eat fish and fatty fish 2–3 times a week, plus game and poultry. Red meat and sausages should be eaten in moderation.”. I used the text from the english article mention above as it was more complete. And it seemed to be written in collaboration with 2 of those involved in the study.(some of it would any one on low carb agree that it is good for you)

From the abstract: ”An average Nordic diet served as a Control diet” What does that mean? To me does it sound as they asked the control group to change their diet according to the scientist request. If so, not only did they not only change more than one parameter on the intervention group. They actually changed the control group. But to what? Maybe this was the reason of the high drop out with the ”control” group. They could not stomach the diet.

So here we have a group of people who very likely was eating white bread, pasta, french fries, sausages and maybe whatever junk you can imagine. And then changed to eat more vegetables, nuts, fish (even fatty) and so on.

Their weight did not change (if I understand right from other articles, this was on purpose), and ”no significant changes were observed in insulin sensitivity or blood pressure”.

Well! I find it significant that many who starts with LCHF, reports that they can stop, or reduce the insulin and blood pressure lowering drugs. And here nothing happened.

It all boils down to this: An example of a study, that is as you would ask a bunch of smokers who are smoking unfiltered cigarettes to change to filtered. Also ask them to take up exercising and other changes. Then observe how many get lung cancer. Would you say the filtered protects you from lung cancer? And everybody should start to smoke them.

By the way, noticed the bold text. It is my way of pointing out that the scientists who did this already had an opinion on what is healthy. It makes at least me wondering if they are objective.

Update: diabetes.dochas written in Swedish his findings of reading the full article.

First thing you can see is that is an observational study. That is they asked people what they for maybe last 6 months. And they check now 13 years later to see how many still lives. It is more to that. But I just give the short version of it.

For me is it no question about it i shit in shit out. If you look at any of this questionairs. And then ask yourself. How accurate would you fill it out? Or maybe, how would others fair? Do you rely think you would write truthfully?

We all know that people underestimate how much we rely eat. And on top of that, is it not that people who want to live healthy, would overestimate some things. While others with other priorities would underestimate same stuff. The mere fact that they would differ in how they over/underestimate things would mean: Who can be sure of anything?

Fundamentally one should ask How could some peoples opinion/memory of past eating have any correlating with what they have eaten and will be eating next coming 10 years?

It seemed a litte odd to me to find that they mixed in high fat suddenly. Till I read the study. And found that they made the assumption that process meat is high fat meat. To me have the sausages been low fat for the last 20 years.

According to the article so ”It showed people who ate a lot of processed meat were also more likely to smoke, be obese and have other behaviours known to damage health.”

But of course did the scientist say that they took it in account. Just one slight problem, besides my above mentioning of how the input was gathered. They have not taken in account of the consumption of neither wheat, sugar or other starches.

To end do I just have to link to at the moment the latest blog post that rawfoodsos had. She do not write often, but the stuff is good.